Trends in speccing

Did an informal poll at that West Side meet-up the other night. Turns out, everyone is writing web series. Almost all of the people I talked to are writing a traditional pilot and also working on web series at the same time. When I started to think about it, I realized that all of my TV-writing friends who aren't writing film scripts are dabbling in web now.

So if you want to keep up with the cool kids (and create a cool calling card for yourself) the web is seriously where it's at.

Don't expect to make a mint though. Even some friends with semi-successful series have not made any money writing for the web. Then again, how much money are you currently making with your traditional specs?

Another trend I've noticed lately is kids' TV. I've had a few friends mention that they're working on specs of Suite Life and are hoping to break in that way. How hard is it to cross over from kids' to grown-up telly? Anyone know?

Breaking all the rules

I've been known to blab on at length about the powers of a solid outline. About how you need to know where you're going before you start going there. (In the real world, I'm a Google maps addict.)

But you know what? Sometimes you just gotta write.

I have 51 pages of my new pilot drafted. It's rough. Of course it's rough, but you know what, it's a damn sight better than the half-finished outline I have for that last pilot I tried to write. 

For this current pilot, my outline was a bit rough when I started writing scenes, but I know the story I want to tell. I've been rolling it over in my mind for about a year now. So I'm flying by the seat of my pants a bit. I'll clean it up in post. Anyway, it feels good to knock out pages. It feels good to get something done.

So that's it. That's my advice for this post.

Sometimes you just gotta write.

How to write a spec(tacular) pilot: step five

Back to my monthly(ish) series on writing a spec pilot. Coincidentally, I have been taking about a month to do each of these steps myself. Which is pathetic. But anyhow, if you missed any installments, here they are:

Step One: Join a Writers' Group
Step Two: Have a Great Idea
Step Three: Heroes and Villains
Step Four: The Story

So now you're ready for:

Step Five: The Outline

I'll be honest, this is the part that kills me. This is the part that has me creating Excel documents and Powerpoints and using the index cards in Celtx and filling notebook pages with ideas and scratching my head and tearing my hair out.

Some people can just breeze through the outline, having lined up the whole story in their head beforehand, each nugget dropping neatly onto the page one terrific story point at a time.

I hate those people.

My process is more like throwing rice pudding at the wall, one splatted spoonful after another (but less fun). Most of that stuff does not stick, then you have a huge mess to clean up later.

So how does this help you?

Well, if you're struggling through your outline, at least you now know that while it might not be exactly normal, at least you're not the only one.

I can also toss around a few tips to help you out. Maybe.*

Do a beat sheet

A beat sheet is a little point-form compendium of the key moments in your script. It can take any form you want it to, as long as it helps you compile all the must-have moments that make up your story.

You might want to think about adding some character beats in here - ones that don't necessarily give the story a huge push forward, but will shed light on your characters.** This is a pilot, after all, and we want to know who these people are.

The most important beats (and therefore the most difficult) are the act outs. They need to be strong, attention-grabbing, edge-of-your-seat moments that will cause your audience to flip the page as fast as their little fingers will let them. The middle act out also needs to turn the story in a new direction.***

Do not. I repeat in bigger letters Do Not start your outline if your act breaks are weak. I speak from experience. I have rewritten so many outlines trying to find my act breaks and it's just not the way to go. Plan your act outs, and the rest of the story will be easier to craft. (In theory. To me, story is never easy.)

Be detailed
Like really, really detailed. Really. The best outline I've ever read was written by writer's group member Adam. It was the first thing he gave to the group as a new member. It was so full of tone and detail, it felt like reading a script.

It made me laugh. Out loud. It made me cringe when the characters were being embarrassing. It made sense and I knew at the end of it exactly what the script would be (in fact, the outline was so good that the script was only a slightly better read - and it's a great script).

My point is, be like Adam. Get your characters working, get your tone on the page, let your voice live in the outline, and give each scene a beginning, middle, and end.

Don't rush
It is so tempting at this stage to just write a damn scene already. And if you're stuck or tired of outlining, go ahead. But only enough to get the juices flowing. Then go back to your outline. Fill in the blanks and then fill in the blanks between the blanks. Read it backwards and forwards. Is your story working and making sense? Are your characters like actual 3D people? Is your tone and voice ringing through. No? Then... iron out the creases, steamroll the bumps, squish the rolled-up cookie dough down with the back of a spoon until your outline is smooth as a smooth thing.

When you're done the outline, it's going to be so detailed and crease-free that writing the first draft of your script should take, oh, about 5 hours (you know, depending on your WPM).

Then you'll spend the next six weeks rewriting. But I get ahead...

+++++++++++++++++++++++

*And then I hope you will add a few tips in the comments section to help me out. Lord knows I need it.
** A lot of people will tell you not to do this. No character moments for the sake of character moments, but I say, if you're writing that kind of pilot, go for it. What would Greek, or The OC, or Gilmore Girls, or even Buffy be without pure lovely character moments?
*** People talk about this a lot, but what does it really mean? To me, it means that something happens that you did not see coming. Something that makes your character rethink what they're trying to do, or gives them an idea for a new way to solve their problem, or adds layers to their problems they did not expect. This act break should make the audience say "No way!"

How to write a spec(tacular) pilot: step four

If you've been following along in this periodic series, you'll have already done the following:

Step One: Join a Writers' Group
Step Two: Have a Great Idea
Step Three: Heroes and Villains

So now you're ready for:

Step Four: The Story

This is the step I struggle with the most, so maybe all of you have some advice for me? Right now I'm stuck in story-land on my destined-for-the-BBC pilot. I know what I want the central conflicts of the show to be, but I still don't have a solid plot to wrap them around. I should be working on it right now. Maybe by writing this blog, I'll give myself the knowledge I need to move forward.

I might not know the best way to come up with a plot, but I do know one thing:

Your pilot must have a plot!

Sounds obvious, right? But it's so easy to forget about plot while you're carefully crafting characters and creating a new world. I and the other members of my writers group have all learned the plot thing the hard way. Without exception, each of us who has written a pilot turned in a first draft that was a very entertaining introduction of the characters and their world, and... that was it. The same note came back each time.

"Yeah, but where's the plot?"

It's not enough to say, my pilot is about a small-town girl in Kansas who has a trusty sidekick in her dog, Tutu. Uh-huh? And what does she do? What happens? What's her struggle? 

You need an answer. In the pilot she gets whisked off by a tornado to a strange land where lions are cowardly and robots need oil. (Don't tell anyone it turns out it was all just a dream - or was it?)

It helps to think about your pilot on two levels: the series and the episode.

On the series level, you introduce the conflicts that will create stories for future episodes. The series conflicts, if you will. These conflicts come back again and again to haunt your characters. Lorelai Gilmore vs her mother. The siblings' nosiness on Brothers and Sisters. The weird, mystical, and dangerous behaviors of the island on Lost. They are ever-present within the series, and without them, it's not the same show anymore. 

But, on the episode level, you need another conflict. An episode struggle for your characters. It will probably grows out of one of those series conflicts, or it could give rise to a series conflict. For example, on Gilmore Girls, the pilot plot is that Lorelai needs to find the tuition money to send Rory to her chi-chi private school. Which gives rise to the series struggle of Lorelai being beholden to her mother. (Beholden. I love that word.)

It can feel artificial coming up with a plot upon which to hang all your characters. That's why you need to do it now, before you start writing your outline. Make it rise naturally out of the situation you've set up - out of your characters' dreams, their hang-ups, or their world. If you do that, the story will be unique to your show. It wouldn't work if you transported it to some other series with another set of characters. If your story would work on Lost, or Pushing Daisies, or Greek, you need a different story.

Hmm, let's see if I can make this easier. A doe, a deer, a female... wait, where was I? Oh yeah, a specific plot that will only work in your series.

Okay, we'll stick with the Wizard of Oz example. Dorothy gets whisked away from her life and transported to another world where strange things happen. You could do that to anyone, anywhere. Fox Mulder. Michael Bluth. Meredith Grey. That's because the story happens to her. It comes from somewhere far away and it takes Dorothy away from her world. 

If you want your pilot story to work, you need to have a story that comes from within.

Take Friday Night Lights. The pilot story is simple. Coach Taylor must lead his team to victory in the first game of the season. This story comes straight from the characters and the place they live. Taylor is passionate about football - so the game means everything to him. The town is passionate about football, so if they lose the game, it means everything. This story wouldn't work anywhere else, because anywhere else, we'd all be saying "It's only a stupid game". But to Coach Taylor and his team, it's life and death.

Okay, so, if you don't have a plot, get one. Something that is life or death to your characters (even if might seem petty to an outsider). And it doesn't hurt to drag them through the mud while you're at it, as long as they struggle on to victory (or emotional growth).

Now I need to go think about how all this applies to my new characters as they careen drunkenly around London, shagging each other with merry abandon.

How to write a spec(tacular) pilot: step 3

Good golly, am I really only on Step 3? I hope you're working slowly, because my tips for writing a Spec(tacular) Pilot are not exactly coming thick and fast.

On the plus side, you've had plenty of time to organize your writers' group and hone your idea. If you don't know what the F I'm talking about, you can catch up here:

Step One: Join a Writers' Group
Step Two: Have a Great Idea

Step Three: Heroes and Villains

Now it's time to do a lot more thinking about characters.

Activate your hero
Everyone knows this precious rule of thumb, and yet, so many scripts come out with the lead character sitting dumbly by while things happen around them, it makes me want to bash my TV in. (Not really. I love my TV.)

Let's have a little example from the (un)real world of TV.

Bionic Woman vs Sarah Connor
In the pilots for Bionic Woman and The Sarah Connor Chronicles, we were introduced to two women, both supposed to be ass-kicking ladies who had the chutzpah to lead their own shows. As such, everything (ie. the success of the show) hinged on these characters.

But, is there any doubt who would win in a fight – even if she doesn't have artificially installed super-strength? No, thought not.

Sarah Connor is not a nice person. She kills people, she's hard on her son, doesn't trust anyone, she's kinda dark, rarely smiles. Total hard ass. But she makes the decisions. She acts. She has a goal (a very noble goal) and no two-bit terminator is going to stop her from protecting her son and saving the world. Sometimes she has to do bad things for the greater good, but we don't mind, we like her, because she GOES FOR IT.

I can't speak for what happens to Jamie Sommers after the Bionic Woman pilot, because I hated her so much from the start, I never made it to episode two. But we're talking about pilot writing here, so episode two isn't important. In the pilot, Sommers is this nice, sensible, girl. Friendly, unassuming. Which might make for a nice person to go to the movies with, but a character like that really can't carry a show. Add to that her reluctance to become the Bionic Woman and her general whiny "why me?"-ness and you wonder what dark forces were at work in the creation of this character. Incidentally, compare this to the Buffy pilot, where we have another reluctant heroine. But the Buffy pilot works because there is something Buffy wants - to be a normal teenage girl - and she'll do anything to get it. (Plus, she gets to kick ass on some gnarly vampires before the episode is over.)

Anyway, you probably know where I'm going with this (since I've said it before): your lead character should be a go-getter, a force of nature, someone to be reckoned with. Think of Veronica Mars, think of Eric Taylor, John Locke, Greg House… even Jerry Seinfeld and Michael Bluth... they all want something, and they're all out there trying to get it.

What does your lead character want?

And just as crucial…

Who is standing in their way?
I'm gonna make a statement here that may not be popular. It's not something I've read in books, or learned from some sage advice-giving pro. It comes from struggling with my own pilot and watching my friends struggle with theirs.

Big build-up, crescendo in the dramatic music...

Make all (or almost all) of your supporting characters antagonists for your lead.

Or, if you're writing an ensemble show, make each character a potential antagonist for every other character.

Think about it and you'll see that this makes sense. If you want to set up a show that could run for 100 episodes or more, you're gonna need lots of conflict. If there's potential conflict from all angles, you've got a lot of meat to chew on before you have to go down to Vons and buy up some more tri-tip steak (aka. introduce a bunch of new characters).

But where can we see this on TV, you ask?

House is surrounded by people who argue, stand in his way, and make his life miserable (usually for his own good). There's not a yes-man among them, which means there's lots of personal conflict for the writers to draw on. They've gone a step further here and made House his own worst enemy.

In Friday Night Lights, the whole town is full of people who are just waiting for Eric Taylor to slip up. And his wife and his daughter, his two biggest supporters, do their share of damage, too.

Brothers and Sisters is an ensemble show where the same principle is in effect. Each sibling -- and their mom -- has the potential to cause problems for their brothers and sisters. And they do.

The Bluths make Michael miserable on Arrested Development. Every single one of them. His only (reluctant) ally is George Michael and I bet that would have changed if the show had existed much longer.

In contrast, a show like The O.C., where the main characters are all basically friends, found itself having to introduce lots of new characters each season so they wouldn't run out of stories (they ran out of stories anyway).

You'll notice that all the above shows are pretty much character-driven. In procedural and high-concept shows, there tends to be more of an Us vs. Them structure.

Lost is a good example. For a long time it was Good (the castaways) vs Bad (the others). But don't you think things got waaay more interesting when the castaways splintered off into factions and you didn't know who was right, who was wrong, and who was just plain evil?

True procedurals, like Bones, CSI, or even Buffy, get away with being even more black and white. But they can afford to be, because they have a weekly guest antagonist (the crime/criminal/demon), so they don't rely as much on inter-character conflict.

So, once again (and I cannot stress this enough), these are my observations, not hard-and-fast-carved-in-stone rules. Go ahead and worship the Golden Calf if you want. You could find lots of examples where these ideas don't apply. I'm merely suggesting, if you want to make writing your first pilot a little easier, and you want me to like you:

Activate your damn lead and Make everyone an antagonist

Got it? Good.

How to write a spec(tacular) pilot: Step two

It’s been a little while. Sorry. I’ve been wrestling with looking for a job, then interviewing for a job (five interviews for one job)*, then starting the job (I interview well), and trying to buy a car which will take me to said job. Which means less time to blog and less time to write.

It’s only been three days since I wrote anything, and two since I worked out, but I already feel... weird... displaced... yucky.

But, as Emerson Cod would say, that ain't none of your concern. You just want to know:

How to write a spec(tacular) pilot

Step one: Join a writers' group**

Step Two: Have a great idea

Most writers I know are having ideas all over the place. We all have our little portable notebooks filled with scratchings that we made during a dire dinner with the in-laws or while we’re supposed to be finding that perfect bouquet of donuts for our boss's latest conquest.

So I’m gonna go ahead and guess that ideas are not a problem.

But what about great ideas? Ones that will make a great spec pilot? Those can be slightly harder to come by.

Now, I’m no expert on what makes a great pilot. (Then again, neither are the people who decide which pilots get made and which get torched. The whole thing is basically a crapshoot.) But I can suggest a few ways to make your pilot easier to write, while also making it a stronger idea should you win the Let's-make-your-pilot Lottery and suddenly be faced with the need to write 12 more episodes.

1. Create a finite world
Where oh where is your pilot going to be set? Want to use your location to create conflict? Then make it a place your characters can’t escape. They need to be stuck with their annoying neighbors, the mysterious black smoke cloud, or Buddy Garrity. That’s why the housewives are so desperate, and the Lost-ers are so, uh, lost. They can’t leave their finite world (the island won’t let - cue spooky music).

Let’s think about this from a different perspective. The Heroes perspective. That show is all over the map – literally. When things get bad the characters can just fly away or time travel to somewhere less dangerous. What fun is that?

2. Flaw-up your characters
It’s tempting to write a nice story about some nice people doing nice things. I mean, you want to like your characters, right? You want to think they could be your friends. Which is cool. You should want to be friends with your characters.

Just make them the kind of friends that end up getting you arrested, or hitched in Vegas, or on the red-eye to Europe without any luggage. Or all three. Don't make them the kind of friends who encourage you to save for retirement and increase your mortgage payments in order to decrease your… yawn! No one on TV thinks about their mortgage. They’re too busy having sex with their paralyzed best friend’s girlfriend.

3. Find your football
In my writers’ group, we like to say that a pilot needs its football. It’s a Friday Night Lights reference – duh! Your football is not, strictly speaking, what your show is about, but it is the framework upon which your whole show hangs. Call it your Vampires and Demons (Buffy), your Sex (Sex in the City), your Rich vs Poor (The OC), your Murder and Mayhem (every police procedural and Pushing Daisies), your Political Adventures (West Wing), or your Sororities and Frats (Greek). It all amounts to the same thing.

You’ve gotta find your football.

Well, actually, you don’t. But your life will be a whole lot easier if you do. Football will transform your idea from:

Small town boy unhappy in small town

to

Small town boy unhappy in small town when invisible potatoes start to reveal to him the deepest, darkest secrets of the townspeople. In code. Tuber code.

Which one would you rather watch?

10-Second Restaurant Reviews
Porto’s Bakery, 315 North Brand Blvd., Glendale, CA

You’d think Porto's was the only lunch place in Glendale
nay, in Los Angeles
The way the patrons swarm like flies around a particularly
potent compost heap
But the food's not like compost, in that it's not rotting and it
tastes rather yummy
Even if you're sitting on the sidewalk, roasting like an invisible tuber
in 104 degree heat

*I've stolen Josh's method of putting bracketed comments in small text, because I like it. Thanks Josh.

**For writers in LA, you can join a new networking/social group for TV writers and their friends. It's going to be the best group in LA, and I'm not just saying that cuz I started it. When you come to the first networking event, you’ll surely meet others who need some critiquing partners.

How to write a spec pilot in 10 (really hard) steps

I recently finished writing my first pilot.  Yay me!

How do you decide when a script is finished? For working TV writers, that's easy. Once there are no more scenes to shoot, there are no more changes to the script (except in the editing room, where they can do some dazzling story adjustments). For us speccers and wannabes, there's no finished. You might think every word in your script is perfect, but one really good note from someone you trust is enough to send that tumbling. You also might get the urge to change things around after you see new episodes of the show you specced, or after you learn more about the craft.

As tempting as it is to spend eternity making minute adjustments to your scripts, it's good to let them go, kinda like kids. That's why I enter competitions. It's not for the prize money or the glory (God knows there's little of that to go around). It's for that 'this script is done' feeling. It's a pretty arbitrary cut-off, but I like to think that that's my best work I'm sending off, therefore the script must be 'finished'. It also allows me to free my mind to concentrate completely on my next project.

Now that I have such vast experience in spec pilot writing (one=vast, didn't you know?) I am uniquely qualified to write posts on how to write a spec pilot. Okay, maybe not. But I am uniquely qualified to share my personal pain and joy with you, write about the mistakes I made and the things I learned, and hopefully we'll all get something out of it.

Being arbitrary yet again, I've chosen to discuss the process in 10 steps / posts. 10 steps which I have not yet decided upon. But when I do, watch out blog fans. Whew, it's gonna be so exciting!

10-Second Restaurant Reviews [in the Form of Silly Poems]

Elf Cafe

2135 Sunset Blvd, Echo Park (or is it Silver Lake? I never know)

Cramped and cozy 

cultivate a fondness for stranger's elbows

Always packed

patience your most precious gift

Best food ever

served by friendly green elves

No meat, no booze

it's all about chow

Who wants to go

right now?

Just pick one already

It's that time again. 

No, not Christmas. Not the vernal equinox. Not Loehmann's massive year-end clearance sale (isn't that all the time?).

It's time to decide what to write next.

My pilot is 89% complete. I just threw my first full draft at the mercy of my writers' group, but I've rewritten the first four acts a couple of zillion times in the past few months, so I feel like it's close. Plus, I need a break from it. It's in the 'yeah, whatever' zone at the moment.

My Bones is probably 96% done. But I want The Group to read it, too, since they're all remarkably clever and kindly helpful and will only make it better.

So, what's next?

I've got another, much darker, pilot idea I'm itching to try out. My first pilot is pretty light family fare. I wouldn't mind writing something with swearing in it, you know?

Then again, it's time to think about Disney and Warner. Should I be writing something sparkly and shiny to use in my application? A Pushing Daisies or a Chuck? I like the wordplay in PD and Chuck has lots of opportunities for the action-comedy one-two punch which is always impressive when you get it right. 

Then again, with my Bones, Ugly Betty, and my pilot, I have three solid specs. So, is it time to branch away from TV?

I could write a feature, but do I really want to spend the next eight months or so in features-land when it's not really where I want to live? I've also always wanted to write a YA novel. I know I said in my last post that I didn't want to write a novel, but I'm an unreliable narrator. Deal.

Oh, and there's also that idea I had for a possibly very funny spoof/novelty spec. No, I'm not telling you, or you'll want to write it. Get your own ideas. Geez.

I was also thinking of a blovel (if things start getting strange on this blog,  you may find I've swerved into the land of fiction), an online comic (note to self: learn to draw), a play (naaa, that's far to esoteric), then there's that album of silly love songs...

Thing is, I want to write all of these. Do I really have to pick just one? 

Artery Cloggery

The Write Girl monthly workshop, with a focus on screenwriting, was last weekend. There were about a dozen super-cool actors who performed scenes the girls had written. But this is about sweet stuff. All the volunteers brought dessert. Check out these pretty cupcakes someone made.

Greasy elbows and a ground-up nose

I'm applying myself, I'm buckling to, I'm taking the bull by the horns, putting my shoulder to the wheel, nose to the grindstone, and elbows to the grease. I'm knuckling down.

I'm ignoring the call of the troubadouristic lifestyle (for now) and getting on with my pilot.

(Oh no! As I write, yet another musician has walked through the door. He's talking about mixing his latest album and their upcoming tour. Ahhh, nooo. Do not tempt me, Mr. Musician, with your dissolute ways.)

Things accomplished since last blog:
Plots conceived and added to script: 1
New scenes: 7
Silly love songs written (lyrics only): 4

So I'm not yet fully able to ignore all distractions. But I'm working on it. Where's the sage advice, everyone? Clearly I could use some.

Artery cloggery

Still on the health kick. Won't last long though, since our next house guest arrives tomorrow and there will be trips to Yum Yum to come.

So that's why pilot season is so spotty

Hey kids, guess what? Writing a pilot is harder than writing a spec of an existing show.

Yes, I hear a chorus of "No duh's" out there. [No duh is a product of fear.]

But for those of you who've never written a pilot before, it's a lot harder than even the people who say it's a lot harder would have you believe. 

I was feeling like my outline – which I wrote and rewrote and rewrote with input from the smartest people I've ever had input from before – was pretty solid. Nicely plotted with room for creativity and change as required. So I figured "Hey, I'll bang out my first draft in less than a week, like I've done with my other spec scripts."

[Insert sound of screeching tires post-slamming-on-the-brakes here. Or that sound they use on ANTM of, like, a needle being scraped across a record.]

I started to write, but as soon as I got to the dialogue, I realized there are no little actors' voices in my head, delivering the lines as I write them. There's no internalized show rhythm, defining how long the scenes should be. No produced scripts telling me what style the action lines should take. No audience familiarity with the characters to replace carefully worded descriptions.

All of a sudden, zillions of new decisions must be made. And they must be made by me! Yikes!

Artery Cloggery

I'm dying for a Black Eye Shake from The 101. Which is why I better find time to go to the gym today.

Real bad writing

Some days I write very very very badly. It's shocking actually. I'm having one of those days. Trying to plow through a rough draft of my Grey's but, well, it stinks so far. So what do I do? Write through it, hoping to get to a place where my writing improves? Or just quit for today and wait until tomorrow?

I think I'll go with plan B.

Also, news from Jane Espenson has thrown a wrench in my summer of writing. She reports that show runners are almost all demanding spec pilots or some other original writing sample for new hires.

I do have a screenplay of course, which counts. But I'm thinking an actual TV pilot might be a better way to go. So, do I abandon my summer of Ugly Betty and Bones (not to mention my half-written Grey's) in favor of a spec pilot?

Oh, the choices, the decisions, the drama!

I think I'll go watch TV.

Slacker excuses:
Watched "An Ice Cream Show" on PBS (hee, it's really called that: "An Ice Cream Show") and am now making plans to travel around the country getting fat on artisan ice cream. Yum.